


Alone

by PrincessBethoc



Category: Boston Legal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-05 21:54:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17927063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrincessBethoc/pseuds/PrincessBethoc
Summary: The night Jerry Espenson took a knife to her throat, Shirley Schmidt went home and sat on the stairs. Alone.





	Alone

She had thought she needed to be alone. After having her life threatened with a cake knife, Shirley Schmidt had wanted to be as far from every manifestation of humanity and all its flaws as possible.

She was wrong. Human beings were not designed to deal with the aftermath of such a trauma alone. But she was alone, and it had been her decision after she had run through the list of people to whom she might turn. They were all disasters waiting to happen. She had even considered confiding in Paul Lewiston – if nothing else, he was not borderline insane – but had decided against it, because she thought she needed to be alone.

But alone, she dwelled upon that knife. What light work it had made of that cake…how easily would it have slit her throat? What pressure would it have taken to slice her skin?

In her heart, she knew – albeit grudgingly – that Jerry Espenson was not a malicious man. Whatever was wrong with the guy, and everyone knew there was something not quite right, _that_ was a psychological meltdown. That said, Shirley was now terrified, _petrified_ , of him. Regardless of her logical understanding of what had happened, she could not defy her emotional response.

Shirley had never been a slave to her emotions. They had never overruled her common sense like this. And he, Jerry Espenson, had done this to her. She knew better than to let it show; that was the only reason she had managed to hold herself together until she got through her front door.

Now, alone, she felt that fear all over again. The faces of her colleagues, her friends, as they had watched it all go on. Alan Shore as he had negotiated Shirley’s freedom, and Melissa as she had taken frantic notes for Jerry.

Ridiculously, she felt an uncomfortable cramp of guilt in the pit of her stomach, for it seemed her words “not enough” had been what tipped him over the edge.

It made her furious. How dare he? How _dare_ he put her in mortal peril and leave her making excuses for him? His behaviour was not reasonable and yet here she was, sitting at the foot of her stairs, trying to find a viable reason for his actions. She already had someone who filled that position of madness in her life: Denny Crane. She did not need to do the same for Jerry. Denny was her friend and had been for decades, but Jerry was not. He was an employee. Nothing more.

And that employee, he could have killed her. He might have murdered her if any one of the people in that room had missed a step and caused him to lose that last little bit of control that had prevented him from pressing that knife through Shirley’s skin. She had never been more scared in her entire life, and she did not think she ever would be again. Or she hoped not, anyway.

Shirley’s hands shook at the flesh memory of that thin blade on her throat. Not only her hands. Her entire body trembled while she struggled for air. Fear was not something was Shirley Schmidt succumbed to, not even when she had a knife against her throat. At least, that was the case while the world watched her.

Alone, leaning on the rails of the banister, she let it win. She lived it now because she had been unable to live it in the moment; she had been the one giving direction, so she could not be the one who fell to pieces.

Part of her wanted someone to hold her. Someone to remind her that human beings were capable of providing safety. Anyone. Hell, she would even have settled for Denny’s idea of a hug. But she could not do this in front of anyone, not even Denny.

Logic told her that she could not move on until she let the trauma of what she had experienced break her down; if she did not do this, she would forever be building on the foundation of that memory, of that fear, and she did not want to do that. It would only seep through the cracks and slowly poison her thoughts, her opinions, her actions. She did not wish to be poisoned by this.

But emotion told her fear was unacceptable. Fear angered her. Riled her. Infuriated her. That another person could make her feel that emotion she most despised…she wanted to hate him. She wanted him to suffer as he had caused her to suffer. He had to feel fear like he had forced her to feel. He had to panic about the immediate future as he had made her do, when he had taken that knife to her throat.

Confusion finally broke Shirley Schmidt down into ragged sobs. She wanted to forgive him but she wanted to hate him. She both pitied and resented the man. She wanted human affection but she also never wanted another person to touch her for as long as she lived. There was no way to reconcile any of it with the woman she knew herself to be. It pulled every fibre of her being apart. It seemed to unravel her DNA; she suddenly could not find herself to be a person at all. She was just millions of molecules of fear and rage and pity and resentment and forgiveness and hatred and…

It was fury she had to allow the world to see; they could not see her like this. They had to see her cold and hard and steadfast in her pursuit of Jerry’s prosecution.

Because nobody could know that when Shirley Schmidt had gone home the night Jerry Espenson had almost killed her, she was left with a woman she did not recognise. A woman who did not quite know what she was supposed to be.

She had to imitate Shirley Schmidt, however crudely, however unflatteringly, however inaccurately, until she really was Shirley Schmidt again.


End file.
